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California lawmakers want to cut red tape to ramp up clean energy but rural communities push back

News Feed
Friday, December 13, 2024

In summary Some rural California communities are resisting efforts to streamline permitting for wind and solar farms and battery storage for environmental or safety reasons. California Assemblymember Buffy Wicks is feeling a time crunch in California’s quest to combat climate change. So she’s trying to speed up renewable energy source construction and storage. “We do have to make it faster and better,”  Wicks said recently. “Government has to work better for people.” Wicks, an Oakland Democrat, was speaking about a Legislative subcommittee field hearing on permitting reform that she held to discuss streamlining renewable energy permits last month. It was part of a statewide tour of several cities to explore permitting solutions for issues such as energy, housing and climate change. The first stop in the Coachella Valley hearing was the Desert Peak battery storage project in Palm Springs, by NextEra Energy Resources. It’s silhouetted against the San Bernardino Mountains, surrounded by a field of wind turbines and next to a Southern California Edison substation. The battery storage center draws power from the Palo Verde nuclear generating station in Arizona and renewable energy projects in the desert, said Pedro Villegas, executive director for political and regulatory affairs for NextEra. Rows of sheds house hundreds of lithium-ion batteries that store power and then feed it into the grid. At full capacity Desert Peak will produce 700 megawatts, enough to power about 140,000 homes.  Facilities like this are key to California’s ambitious climate goals. The state aims to reach net carbon zero — the point at which the amount of greenhouse gasses that humans emit equals the amount removed from the atmosphere — by 2045. In 2022 the California Air Resources Board released a plan to get there. To do that, California has to cut red tape, Wicks said. Industry experts at the hearing said there has to be less duplication of paperwork, increased staffing at regulatory agencies and better coordination between them. Wind and solar farms can displace valuable ecosystems and farmland, while battery storage sites pose fire risks, so the state is facing pushback from rural communities that are ground zero for renewable energy development. Five years ago San Bernardino County restricted new large-scale wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of rural land after residents in some communities complained the projects threatened fragile natural environments and historic sites. “We need to be mindful of creating sacrifice zones in pursuing climate solutions,” Nataly Escobedo Garcia, policy coordinator for the Fresno-based Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, told the subcommittee. Converting traditional farms to solar farms also sparks opposition, Villegas said.  “Especially in rural areas, some folks have a reaction to turning agricultural lands to solar energy,” he said.  Battery storage has gotten bad press lately, with several high profile fires in San Diego County.  An Escondido battery storage facility caught fire in September, prompting evacuations and closures of nearby schools. In May a blaze at a battery storage site in Otay Mesa burned for two and a half weeks, sparking worry about the safety of the high-powered batteries. In September 2023, a Valley Center energy storage facility caught fire.  Read Next California lawmakers negotiating sweeping package to speed up solar, wind energy August 1, 2024August 1, 2024 Energy experts said the industry has improved its fire safety protocols since those were built. “The facility in Escondido was installed in 2017,” said Scott Murtishaw, executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance. “That’s ancient technology.”  Despite advances in newer and potentially safer energy technology, lawmakers say efforts to wean Californians off fossil fuels aren’t moving fast enough to avert the effects of climate change. “There’s a huge chasm between the things we say are our priorities and what we are actually delivering in the state” in renewable energy and climate action, said Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine. “The No. 1 thing we need to do to accelerate the pace is permit reform.” Read More A stunt or first step? Inside California’s last-minute effort to cut electric bills and streamline clean energy August 30, 2024September 3, 2024 California hits milestones toward 100% clean energy — but has a long way to go August 19, 2024August 28, 2024

Some rural California communities are resisting efforts to streamline permitting for wind and solar farms and battery storage for environmental or safety reasons.

A worker wearing a hard hat and protective clothing walks alongside a row of tall, identical battery storage units under a clear blue sky. The units are aligned precisely on a metal framework, creating a repeating pattern.

In summary

Some rural California communities are resisting efforts to streamline permitting for wind and solar farms and battery storage for environmental or safety reasons.

California Assemblymember Buffy Wicks is feeling a time crunch in California’s quest to combat climate change. So she’s trying to speed up renewable energy source construction and storage.

“We do have to make it faster and better,”  Wicks said recently. “Government has to work better for people.”

Wicks, an Oakland Democrat, was speaking about a Legislative subcommittee field hearing on permitting reform that she held to discuss streamlining renewable energy permits last month. It was part of a statewide tour of several cities to explore permitting solutions for issues such as energy, housing and climate change.

The first stop in the Coachella Valley hearing was the Desert Peak battery storage project in Palm Springs, by NextEra Energy Resources.

It’s silhouetted against the San Bernardino Mountains, surrounded by a field of wind turbines and next to a Southern California Edison substation. The battery storage center draws power from the Palo Verde nuclear generating station in Arizona and renewable energy projects in the desert, said Pedro Villegas, executive director for political and regulatory affairs for NextEra.

Rows of sheds house hundreds of lithium-ion batteries that store power and then feed it into the grid. At full capacity Desert Peak will produce 700 megawatts, enough to power about 140,000 homes. 

Facilities like this are key to California’s ambitious climate goals. The state aims to reach net carbon zero — the point at which the amount of greenhouse gasses that humans emit equals the amount removed from the atmosphere — by 2045. In 2022 the California Air Resources Board released a plan to get there.

To do that, California has to cut red tape, Wicks said. Industry experts at the hearing said there has to be less duplication of paperwork, increased staffing at regulatory agencies and better coordination between them.

Wind and solar farms can displace valuable ecosystems and farmland, while battery storage sites pose fire risks, so the state is facing pushback from rural communities that are ground zero for renewable energy development.

Five years ago San Bernardino County restricted new large-scale wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of rural land after residents in some communities complained the projects threatened fragile natural environments and historic sites.

“We need to be mindful of creating sacrifice zones in pursuing climate solutions,” Nataly Escobedo Garcia, policy coordinator for the Fresno-based Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, told the subcommittee.

Converting traditional farms to solar farms also sparks opposition, Villegas said. 

“Especially in rural areas, some folks have a reaction to turning agricultural lands to solar energy,” he said. 

Battery storage has gotten bad press lately, with several high profile fires in San Diego County. 

An Escondido battery storage facility caught fire in September, prompting evacuations and closures of nearby schools. In May a blaze at a battery storage site in Otay Mesa burned for two and a half weeks, sparking worry about the safety of the high-powered batteries. In September 2023, a Valley Center energy storage facility caught fire. 

Energy experts said the industry has improved its fire safety protocols since those were built.

“The facility in Escondido was installed in 2017,” said Scott Murtishaw, executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance. “That’s ancient technology.” 

Despite advances in newer and potentially safer energy technology, lawmakers say efforts to wean Californians off fossil fuels aren’t moving fast enough to avert the effects of climate change.

“There’s a huge chasm between the things we say are our priorities and what we are actually delivering in the state” in renewable energy and climate action, said Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine. “The No. 1 thing we need to do to accelerate the pace is permit reform.”

Read the full story here.
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Related News

Energy is central to American politics. That all started with Jimmy Carter.

We have yet to solve the problems that Carter confronted head-on as president.

In 1981, a Democratic president who’d made energy policy a centerpiece of his administration left the White House after just one term — voted out partly due to the perception that he didn’t do enough to combat inflation and high energy prices amid destabilizing conflict in the Middle East. His successor promised to open up the country’s oilfields and to “make America great again.” It’s not exactly 1981 all over again, but today — as the country holds funeral services for Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, who died on December 29 at the age of 100 — the echoes of his term in office are loud enough to warrant taking a second look at how Carter’s presidency inaugurated the world we live in, one in which energy is central to American politics.  “From the minute he took office, Jimmy Carter made it clear that energy reform was top of his agenda. Literally,” the Princeton historian Meg Jacobs, author of the book Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s, said in an email. “He got out of his limo during the procession to the White House, during the freezing cold, and watched the rest from a solar-heated viewing stand.” In symbolism and substance, President Carter displayed an obsessive attention to energy. He famously installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, but more consequentially, he created the Department of Energy, and allocated what remains a record amount of funding into energy research and development. Carter’s energy policy had two primary objectives: reducing the U.S.’s dependence on foreign oil, and reducing its energy consumption altogether. The first goal has remained the watchword of the nation’s energy policy ever since. But the second, rooted in the Sunday school teacher’s conservationist and communitarian ethos, helped end his presidency — and helped convince future leaders that Americans’ refusal to be told to make do with less was an immutable political fact. Carter’s attention to energy was the result of its appearance in the 1970s as a novel political problem. For most of the 20th century, the country had had little in the way of a coordinated energy policy, and the subject was far removed from political contestation in the public eye — even as the postwar American dream of car-dependent suburban homeownership was predicated on the assurance of oil’s eternal abundance and cheapness. The ’70s was the decade in which that promise started to crack up. “By the mid-1970s, if you’re a middle-class working person who’s been encouraged to move to the suburbs and buy a V8 Ford or Pontiac, you’re structurally dependent on cheap oil and access to that oil for the reproduction of your everyday life,” said Caleb Wellum, a historian at the University of Toronto. Read Next The highly flammable politics of high gas prices Eve Andrews So it was a profoundly disruptive moment for the nation when, in October of 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries announced an embargo on exports of oil to any country that had supported Israel in the Six-Day War — catalyzing high gas prices in the U.S., lines of cars at gas stations stretching for blocks, and a years-long period of “stagflation” characterized by the demoralizing combination of high inflation, low growth, and high unemployment.  Besides the economic devastation it wrought, the embargo carried symbolic weight: “This comes after the Vietnam War, which was a blow to the collective ego of the United States because we had not emerged victorious. And then these nations that we thought were sort of our client states in the Middle East all of a sudden dictating to us about certain things. It was rather stunning at the time,” said Jay Hakes, the former administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration and director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. The presidents who immediately inherited the situation, Richard Nixon and, upon his resignation, Gerald Ford, sought to remedy the situation primarily by expanding domestic energy production. But their focus on energy was less zealous than Carter’s — and far less visionary. By the time Carter took office, on January 20, 1977, memories of the gasoline lines were already starting to fade. But with inflation and oil prices still high, and the U.S. still reliant on foreign imports of oil, Carter made it his mission to remind the country that it needed to think about energy. “A lot of his presidency was about convincing Americans that there still was an energy crisis even though the embargo was over,” Wellum said. “The conditions that the embargo had taken advantage of were still present, and the U.S. still had this problem it had to figure out.” But Carter had a complex political coalition to wrangle behind his ambitions. The Democratic Party he led was split between two visions of how to address the issue: “You have the kind of old left, New Deal Democrat who is interested in protecting consumers, protecting the working class, and making life more affordable for more people, and that is in tension with the new left, environmentalist side of the left wing that’s questioning the ethics of consumption, saying that maybe oil is too cheap,” said Wellum. On the other side of the aisle, animated by free-market economic doctrines then on the rise, was a Republican Party insistent that the gas shortages were “not a matter of scarcity but a matter of government overreach, bad government policy, and environmentalist overreach,” Wellum said. The prescription, eagerly supported by the oil industry: “We need access to Alaska. We need access to the Outer Continental Shelf. We need to rethink how we restrict or regulate oil production,” Wellum continued. “If we do that, the free market and the oil companies and the American spirit will innovate and produce our way out of this energy crisis. We don’t need to consume less; we can have even more.” This narrative was more or less anathema to Carter, who complemented his push for energy independence with an insistence that Americans do their part and collectively sacrifice for the nation. Clad in a cardigan, he addressed the country two weeks after taking office and implored Americans to turn their thermostats down to “65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night” to address the ongoing natural gas shortages. At the same time, Carter was a contradictory figure who in some ways embodied aspects of each of the coalitions of his time — at once a big-government liberal and a deregulator; simultaneously the conservationist who fought the oil industry to preserve vast areas in Alaska and the energy hawk who expanded domestic coal production despite being aware of the science, already established, behind human-made global warming. “People often talk about Jimmy Carter the peanut farmer, but he’s also Jimmy Carter the nuclear engineer,” said Wellum. In some ways, Carter’s economic policy marked the turning point toward the era of neoliberalism — a transition that Wellum argues in his book Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis & the Making of Modern America was directly spurred by the oil crises of that decade. Driven by a belief in the efficiency of markets, Carter lifted the price controls on oil that Nixon had imposed in 1971 — a move characterized by critics at the time as a giveaway to the oil industry.  But Carter also signed the country’s first significant appliance efficiency standards into law, and invested unprecedented amounts of federal funds in energy research and development. These investments laid the groundwork for later breakthroughs, including the drilling technology behind hydraulic fracking, which enabled the U.S. shale boom in the 2000s. They also included a full-scale embrace of solar energy — a policy that, Hakes argued, “50 years from now, will be considered Carter’s major achievement.” Protesters outside the White House blamed the Carter administration’s handling of the energy crisis for fuel shortages and long lines at gas stations. Wally McNamee / Corbis via Getty Images Carter characterized the nation’s need to secure and conserve its energy as the “moral equivalent of war” — a phrase derided in the press using its acronym, MEOW. The political problem was simple: “Hectoring the electorate in that way is not good politics,” said Wellum. Carter had already cemented the public image of himself as a preachy moralizer when things came to a turning point in 1979, with dramatic events in Iran. After the Islamic Revolution, another symbolic repudiation of American global hegemony, came a second oil shock — and more gas-station lines, which Hakes argued may have contributed even more to sinking Carter’s reelection than the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. “Carter’s poll ratings were lower in the spring of 1979 when we had the gasoline lines than they were later after the hostages were taken,” said Hakes. It was a perfect opportunity for a presidential candidate whose message to Americans was that they could have everything they wanted. “Reagan was the candidate who was optimistic about America, who would talk about how, if we can get government off your backs, we can liberate you ‘to do those things that I know you can do so well,’” said Wellum. “And Carter came across as this kind of moralizing guy, saying, ‘Americans have become decadent and no one’s listening to me.’” In the presidential debates, Wellum said, “Carter emphasized conservation, and Reagan was emphasizing how we can restore abundant American production in the future, as opposed to a more efficient, environmentally friendly future.” Reagan won the Electoral College by 489 votes to Carter’s 49. “At the popular level, that is a blow to the 70s as the environmental decade — the creation of the EPA, the Department of Energy, Earth Day in 1970,” said Welum. “There’s the backlash to that, the feeling that it’s anti-American, it’s anti-growth, it’s anti-freedom.” The lesson was heeded by politicians of all stripes. Hakes, whose books on energy policy include The Presidents And The Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush, said the word “sacrifice,” once a political cliché, almost completely disappeared from presidential speeches after Carter. Hakes puts this down partly to the fact that Carter was among the last presidents from a generation with a different attitude towards abundance and sacrifice. “The political leaders of that time generally had experienced World War II,” notes Hakes. (Carter was at the Naval Academy during the war and didn’t graduate in time to serve.) But for a few decades after Carter’s presidency, energy conservation became a nonissue in U.S. politics. Due in part to Carter and Reagan’s policies, as well as European and Japanese gas taxes, the world became far less reliant on Middle Eastern oil in the 1980s. Oil prices tanked in 1986 and remained low through the duration of the century. Needless to say, the importance of reducing oil consumption has since returned with a vengeance to the foreground of current affairs, fueled by climate crisis as well as new geopolitical conflicts. But we have yet to solve the issues that Carter confronted. Within the climate movement, self-described “ecomodernists” argue that environmentalism’s legacy of conservationism is an albatross that permanently tars it in the public eye with the unpopular politics of austerity, while proponents of “degrowth” insist on the need to focus on reducing consumption. For socialist critics of the environmental movement, meanwhile, the ingredient missing from its ability to persuade people to take climate change seriously is a class politics, given the levels of money and power invested in the status quo. “Environmental politics around energy, but also on climate, is really difficult to do, especially without some form of redistribution,” said Wellum — and the times feel bleak for those invested in this approach: “I’m pessimistic, or sad, that we don’t really know what to do around rethinking and reorganizing consumption, and the argument around redistribution seems even more in the wilderness,” Wellum said. To Hakes, the apparent defeat of Carter’s approach is tragic. “If climate change is a problem, people should feel under some moral obligation: I will turn off the lights, or I will obey the speed limit because I know that my pollution will be a lot less, or I will go out of my way to buy the most efficient appliances and automobiles that meet my needs and I can afford. Or maybe I’ll walk a mile to pick up something rather than drive,” Hakes said. “But politicians since Carter have not dared to say that, and maybe that’s a political reality we have to live with,” Hakes added. “One would assume that at this point people would say, ‘Our children and grandchildren deserve to have nature, and we shouldn’t be changing the environment pell-mell,’ and conservation would come back onto the agenda. I haven’t seen that yet. And I don’t even see seeds of that.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Energy is central to American politics. That all started with Jimmy Carter. on Jan 9, 2025.

Energy
Climate
Crisis

The role of modeling in the energy transition

At the MITEI Fall Colloquium, the administrator of the US Energy Information Administration explained why long-term energy models are not forecasting tools — and why they’re still vitally important.

Joseph F. DeCarolis, administrator for the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), has one overarching piece of advice for anyone poring over long-term energy projections.“Whatever you do, don’t start believing the numbers,” DeCarolis said at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Fall Colloquium. “There’s a tendency when you sit in front of the computer and you’re watching the model spit out numbers at you … that you’ll really start to believe those numbers with high precision. Don’t fall for it. Always remain skeptical.”This event was part of MITEI’s new speaker series, MITEI Presents: Advancing the Energy Transition, which connects the MIT community with the energy experts and leaders who are working on scientific, technological, and policy solutions that are urgently needed to accelerate the energy transition.The point of DeCarolis’s talk, titled “Stay humble and prepare for surprises: Lessons for the energy transition,” was not that energy models are unimportant. On the contrary, DeCarolis said, energy models give stakeholders a framework that allows them to consider present-day decisions in the context of potential future scenarios. However, he repeatedly stressed the importance of accounting for uncertainty, and not treating these projections as “crystal balls.”“We can use models to help inform decision strategies,” DeCarolis said. “We know there’s a bunch of future uncertainty. We don’t know what's going to happen, but we can incorporate that uncertainty into our model and help come up with a path forward.”Dialogue, not forecastsEIA is the statistical and analytic agency within the U.S. Department of Energy, with a mission to collect, analyze, and disseminate independent and impartial energy information to help stakeholders make better-informed decisions. Although EIA analyzes the impacts of energy policies, the agency does not make or advise on policy itself. DeCarolis, who was previously professor and University Faculty Scholar in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University, noted that EIA does not need to seek approval from anyone else in the federal government before publishing its data and reports. “That independence is very important to us, because it means that we can focus on doing our work and providing the best information we possibly can,” he said.Among the many reports produced by EIA is the agency’s Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), which projects U.S. energy production, consumption, and prices. Every other year, the agency also produces the AEO Retrospective, which shows the relationship between past projections and actual energy indicators.“The first question you might ask is, ‘Should we use these models to produce a forecast?’” DeCarolis said. “The answer for me to that question is: No, we should not do that. When models are used to produce forecasts, the results are generally pretty dismal.”DeCarolis pointed to wildly inaccurate past projections about the proliferation of nuclear energy in the United States as an example of the problems inherent in forecasting. However, he noted, there are “still lots of really valuable uses” for energy models. Rather than using them to predict future energy consumption and prices, DeCarolis said, stakeholders should use models to inform their own thinking.“[Models] can simply be an aid in helping us think and hypothesize about the future of energy,” DeCarolis said. “They can help us create a dialogue among different stakeholders on complex issues. If we’re thinking about something like the energy transition, and we want to start a dialogue, there has to be some basis for that dialogue. If you have a systematic representation of the energy system that you can advance into the future, we can start to have a debate about the model and what it means. We can also identify key sources of uncertainty and knowledge gaps.”Modeling uncertaintyThe key to working with energy models is not to try to eliminate uncertainty, DeCarolis said, but rather to account for it. One way to better understand uncertainty, he noted, is to look at past projections, and consider how they ended up differing from real-world results. DeCarolis pointed to two “surprises” over the past several decades: the exponential growth of shale oil and natural gas production (which had the impact of limiting coal’s share of the energy market and therefore reducing carbon emissions), as well as the rapid rise in wind and solar energy. In both cases, market conditions changed far more quickly than energy modelers anticipated, leading to inaccurate projections.“For all those reasons, we ended up with [projected] CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions that were quite high compared to actual,” DeCarolis said. “We’re a statistical agency, so we’re really looking carefully at the data, but it can take some time to identify the signal through the noise.”Although EIA does not produce forecasts in the AEO, people have sometimes interpreted the reference case in the agency’s reports as predictions. In an effort to illustrate the unpredictability of future outcomes in the 2023 edition of the AEO, the agency added “cones of uncertainty” to its projection of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, with ranges of outcomes based on the difference between past projections and actual results. One cone captures 50 percent of historical projection errors, while another represents 95 percent of historical errors.“They capture whatever bias there is in our projections,” DeCarolis said of the uncertainty cones. “It’s being captured because we’re comparing actual [emissions] to projections. The weakness of this, though, is: who’s to say that those historical projection errors apply to the future? We don’t know that, but I still think that there’s something useful to be learned from this exercise.”The future of energy modelingLooking ahead, DeCarolis said, there is a “laundry list of things that keep me up at night as a modeler.” These include the impacts of climate change; how those impacts will affect demand for renewable energy; how quickly industry and government will overcome obstacles to building out clean energy infrastructure and supply chains; technological innovation; and increased energy demand from data centers running compute-intensive workloads.“What about enhanced geothermal? Fusion? Space-based solar power?” DeCarolis asked. “Should those be in the model? What sorts of technology breakthroughs are we missing? And then, of course, there are the unknown unknowns — the things that I can’t conceive of to put on this list, but are probably going to happen.”In addition to capturing the fullest range of outcomes, DeCarolis said, EIA wants to be flexible, nimble, transparent, and accessible — creating reports that can easily incorporate new model features and produce timely analyses. To that end, the agency has undertaken two new initiatives. First, the 2025 AEO will use a revamped version of the National Energy Modeling System that includes modules for hydrogen production and pricing, carbon management, and hydrocarbon supply. Second, an effort called Project BlueSky is aiming to develop the agency’s next-generation energy system model, which DeCarolis said will be modular and open source.DeCarolis noted that the energy system is both highly complex and rapidly evolving, and he warned that “mental shortcuts” and the fear of being wrong can lead modelers to ignore possible future developments. “We have to remain humble and intellectually honest about what we know,” DeCarolis said. “That way, we can provide decision-makers with an honest assessment of what we think could happen in the future.” 

Energy
Climate
Government

Carter leaves influential energy, environmental legacy

Former President Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, left behind a history of pioneering energy and environmental policy. In his single term in the Oval Office, Carter took a range of actions on issues that remained influential long after his presidency ended, from imposing new wilderness protections to creating the federal Department of Energy...

Former President Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, left behind a history of pioneering energy and environmental policy. In his single term in the Oval Office, Carter took a range of actions on issues that remained influential long after his presidency ended, from imposing new wilderness protections to creating the federal Department of Energy during the recurring energy crises of the 1970s. Carter formally created the department in August 1977, seven months into his presidency, when he signed the Department of Energy Organization Act. The law consolidated a number of existing agencies under the umbrella of the new federal department. The reorganization was largely in response to the 1973 oil crisis, during which the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) imposed an embargo against nations that had backed Israel during the Yom Kippur War the same month. Amid national anxiety around energy supply, Carter was also an early champion of energy efficiency and specifically the use of renewable energy to achieve American energy independence. One of his most visible efforts was the installation of 32 solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1979. The installation came two years after the establishment of tax credits for homeowners installing solar-powered water heaters. In his remarks marking their installation, he expressed concerns that remain relevant in 2024 about American dependence on foreign imports for energy and called for the U.S. to derive 20 percent of its energy from solar by the year 2000. “Solar energy will not pollute our air or water. We will not run short of it. No one can ever embargo the Sun or interrupt its delivery to us,” Carter said. The 39th president’s emphasis on energy efficiency is often remembered as emblematic of his pleas for Americans to make some material sacrifices for the greater good, in contrast to the optimistic tone of his successor, Ronald Reagan, who defeated him in a landslide in 1980. The panels were ultimately removed from the White House under Reagan — an action frequently referenced as a reflection of that contrast, though their removal wasn't completed until 1986, halfway through Reagan’s second term and months after the solar tax credit expired. A set of panels was reinstalled decades later under former President Obama. Despite his emphasis on renewable energy, Carter was also a major booster of the domestic coal industry. He was elected by a Democratic coalition that included Southern and Appalachian mine workers that are today solidly Republican, and touted coal as a resource that would make the U.S. less reliant on oil from the Middle East. “I would rather burn a ton of Kentucky coal than to see our nation become dependent by buying another barrel of OPEC oil,” he said in a 1979 speech in the Bluegrass State, referencing the bloc of major oil-producing nations. He struck a similar note in a 1978 speech, saying “for now, we have no choice but to continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels, and coal is our most abundant fossil fuel.” In a 1980 campaign speech in Illinois, he told union miners “my goal as president of the United States is to see on the world energy markets Arab oil replaced with Illinois coal.” Carter also leaves an expansive legacy on conservation, including his 1978 signature of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which created 10 new national parks and preserves in the state comprising 56 million acres. Over the course of his presidency, he created 39 new national park sites. The National Park Service named him an honorary National Park ranger in 2016. As recently as 2022, the then-97-year-old former president weighed in on environmental disputes in Alaska, filing an appeal against a planned road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge that would link the towns of King Cove and Cold Bay. In the appeal, Carter said construction of the road would violate ANILCA, writing that an earlier decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing it “is not only deeply mistaken, it’s dangerous.” The Biden administration announced its backing of the road in November. Carter, an engineer by training, also bucked fellow Democrats in Congress with plans to eliminate multiple federal water projects that he believed were financially wasteful and harmful to rivers. “[I]f your interest was sensible stewardship of the nation’s finite natural and financial resources, many of his decisions seemed sound,” historian Rick Perlstein wrote in his book “Reaganland.” “But what looked like an inexplicable boondoggle to an engineer often looked like a matter of life and death for the congressmen in whose districts those projects sat.” Among those who pushed back were former Rep. Mo Udall (D-Ariz.), who said “Tucson and Phoenix [were] going to dry up and blow away” if Carter’s planned “hit list” went through.  Congress and Carter's White House eventually reached a deal in which 18 projects on the list saw their funding cut, but nine others were unaffected. The Biden Interior Department hailed Carter’s environmental legacy in a statement following the announcement of his death. "President Jimmy Carter exemplified what it means to live a life of faith and service to others. His love for and conservation of our shared public lands leaves a tremendous legacy, and I am grateful that the Department will continue to honor his work at the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park for generations to come,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “My heartfelt condolences go out to his family and the global community as we all mourn this selfless public servant."

Energy
Conservation
Nature

Five people to watch on energy, environmental issues in the new year

Energy and climate are expected to be divisive issues in 2025 as President-elect Trump, backed by GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, looks to expand U.S. energy development while congressional Democrats worried about the effect on global warming seek to stymie him. Here are five figures likely to make headlines on energy and environmental issues...

Energy and climate are expected to be divisive issues in 2025 as President-elect Trump, backed by GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, looks to expand U.S. energy development while congressional Democrats worried about the effect on global warming seek to stymie him. Here are five figures likely to make headlines on energy and environmental issues in 2025. Energy czar and Interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum As chair of a new National Energy Council, former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) is set to broadly coordinate the incoming administration's energy agenda. If confirmed to lead the Interior Department, he also likely would oversee an increase in oil and gas drilling on federal lands, marking a sharp contrast to the department's outgoing secretary, Deb Haaland, who has been a major ally within the Biden administration to environmentalists.  North Dakota is the No. 3 state nationwide for crude oil production. He was a high-profile Trump surrogate during the 2024 campaign and reportedly was a vice presidential contender. One of the president-elect’s less controversial nominees, he is unlikely to see obstacles to his confirmation. Energy secretary nominee Chris Wright Chris Wright, the CEO of fracking giant Liberty Energy, similarly is likely to carry out policy that echoes Trump’s support of the fossil fuel industry if confirmed to lead the Energy Department. President Biden's Energy Department, under Secretary Jennifer Granholm, has heavily promoted renewable energy development and expansion of electric vehicles, two frequent targets of Trump's. The department is likely to abandon those efforts under Wright.  However, many of the renewable-energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature legislative package, have found unlikely defenders among the House GOP caucus, suggesting Wright may face some resistance if the administration seeks to unwind them as expected.  Wright also appears unlikely to face meaningful opposition to his confirmation in the incoming Republican-majority Senate. Environmental Protection Agency administrator nominee Lee Zeldin Lee Zeldin distinguished himself during Trump's first term as one of the president's most loyal defenders in Congress, serving on his defense during his first impeachment trial, and he is likely to take a similar approach to backing Trump's agenda as part of his incoming administration. This likely would include rolling back many of his predecessor Michael Regan’s policies, like the first Trump EPA did with Obama-era rules. Zeldin, who represented New York’s 1st Congressional District in the House before resigning to run for governor in 2022, did not have an extensive environmental profile before Trump nominated him to lead the EPA, but he also has prompted little controversy ahead of his confirmation. Sen.-elect John Curtis Sen.-elect John Curtis (R-Utah), who easily won the Senate race in deep-red Utah to succeed Sen. Mitt Romney (R) after beating a Trump-backed candidate in the primaries, appears poised to play a key role in any potential bipartisan work on climate issues in the 119th Congress. In the House, where he has represented Utah's 3rd District since 2017, Curtis was the founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, a group of Republican lawmakers who acknowledge the threat of climate change but favor free-market solutions.  He also co-sponsored a bipartisan bill in the lower chamber with Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) that called for a federal study of the effects of an import tax based on carbon intensity. That bill was similar to a proposal from one of Curtis’s new colleagues, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), suggesting Curtis could be a notable player on climate in the next Congress, though the Republican majorities likely will be more focused on promoting energy development than efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Rep. Jared Huffman As Democrats figure out their next steps after 2024’s electoral losses, many of the party’s younger leaders have called for leadership shakeups in Congress, and several have mounted challenges to more-senior committee leaders.  One of the first Democrats to announce such a challenge was Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), who made a bid for leadership of the House Natural Resources Committee against incumbent ranking member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.). Grijalva, who is retiring in 2027, initially said he would seek another term, but he withdrew shortly after and endorsed Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.). Stansbury withdrew amid overwhelming support for Huffman, who was formally voted ranking member this week.  In the role, Huffman will put the effectiveness of the leadership shakeups to the test, particularly on issues such as environmental justice and renewable energy, where Trump is likely to seek to undo much of the party’s work of the past four years.

Energy
Climate
Resources

South Texas coal-fired power plant to switch to clean energy after receiving more than $1 billion in federal money

San Miguel Electric Cooperative's plan to turn into a solar and battery plant will leave only 14 coal-fired power plants in the state.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. A South Texas coal-fired power plant will receive more than $1 billion in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to convert into a solar and battery facility, according to the agency. The switch by San Miguel Electric Cooperative, located in Christine in Atascosa County, to a solar and battery plant will be funded by more than $1.4 billion of a $4.37 billion federal grant to support clean energy while maintaining rural jobs. With the co-op’s transition to a renewable energy plant, only 14 coal-fired power plants will be left in the state. In September, the CEO of San Miguel Electric Cooperative, Craig Courter, told a local newspaper that with federal funding, the co-op can “virtually eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to provide affordable and reliable power to rural Texans.” “We take pride in our attention to detail in safety, environmental compliance, community service and mined land reclamation,” Courter told the Pleasanton Express. According to the USDA’s Thursday announcement, the transformation will reduce climate pollution by more than 1.8 million tons yearly and support as many as 600 jobs. In 2019, a Texas Tribune investigation showed that state agencies allowed San Miguel Cooperative to contaminate acres with toxic chemicals. These chemicals can leach into groundwater and soil and endanger people’s health. According to 2023 EPA data, the plant is the fourth-largest mercury polluter of all power plants in the state. “For years, folks in my county have been worried about water contamination from San Miguel’s lignite mine, so with this announcement, we are hopeful that McMullen County’s water will be clean long into the future,” McMullen County Judge James Teal told the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental group. Teal said that county government officials are looking forward to a benefits plan that will “implement a quality remediation process for the existing plant and mine and provide us with peace of mind that the mess has been cleaned up.” The most important Texas news,sent weekday mornings. San Miguel will still need to establish a timeline for shutting down the coal plant. Still, it’s a “historic victory” for South Texas, said James Perkins, a Sierra Club Texas campaign organizer. Other co-ops in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, and Nebraska received similar federal funding. “Texans want healthy air and water and affordable, reliable energy — and we’re ready to come together to get it done,” said Perkins.

Energy
Agriculture
Climate

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